Check Mate
by TheViolentDelight
Summary: Once upon a time a smuggler and a pathfinder fell in love. In the night they shared some of the secrets, but what is the cost of the darkest ones? NOTE: A BENEFACTION/FULCRUM AU


It is after a cave in Kadara that Sara Ryder begins to learn to play the game. Not the one the Initiative has her on their board. The one that had been playing since the conception of the Andromeda Initiative. The game built on a golden lie, one that so many more people in the shadows have died for.

Reyes watches her as her eyes shutter as her decision is made, as there is the quick pop from his sniper hidden in the dark and the Queen on the Throne lays in the dark, in the dust. He makes his pawns, his knights, his rooks, and he goes to be gentle to his own Queen, the most important piece on the board.

"Why didn't you trust me." She is angry, she is fierce. There is the reason she is the most sought after piece.

And in return he gives her a hidden secret away from the ears of others, "I… liked the way you looked at me… I was afraid that would change."

They are a stalemate for a moment. He watches her with his heart ripped open, all the darkness seeping out, blood and broken as it is.

"Nothing's changed." She says, and it feels like it's the first time he has really breathed in years, not missing a step he moves to claim her.

"You have bad taste in men." He knows what he is.

"The worst." She doesn't disagree.

* * *

He takes her that night, not against the dingy wall of a cave, with rocks and a dead women. He shows her with his words and body that she was more than just a pawn or even a knight. She was the queen on the board even if no one else acknowledged it. As she is breathy and pliant she flips him with her strength and takes what she needs instead of accepting what she is given.

Perhaps, the Queen took the king.

* * *

She learns after that. She tells him to keep his secrets, but always let her know the ones that matter. They do as she travels the stars, as he waits and stares for when she comes back. She always has more mobility than he does. Always hiding in the shadows, behind pretenses as Keema plays her own game. Things stabilize and outside of the Kett things almost become peaceful. He plans his moves, he is always a few steps ahead of his foes, of the games, Kaetus tries to play at escape.

Sara dies but then comes back to him. "I thought of you, only you." She doesn't follow the protocol they've established. He can't blame her, but keeping the rumors of her slumming it with a smuggler would be of important information to the right ears. She is only starting to see the big game, the one hidden under all things. He wants to tell her everything as he is deep inside her, panting at her skin, crawling to be closer. He is such a needy thing these days. Trying to absorb some of the starlight from her skin, the light of the sun in her eyes, and how she walks without his demons nipping at her heels. He worries his demons will devour them. If his secrets don't first.

It is after Meridian that she breathes again. She sometimes speaks to him like a priest in confession. Like she could pour all her hidden crevasses and darkness in her soul and he would keep it safe. The things she learns. It is one of the nights after she does a routine stop at Kadara port and sneaks away that she whispers of Jien Garson, of murder, of foul play.

Of a thing called a Reaper, galaxy destroyer, life ender. Of the dead left behind. Reyes knows of the dead, sometimes on his dark days, he counts them until the moment he stops remembering their names until they just become one of many or one of a goal, and then he lists the things each death accomplished, each target better than the last. The blood he traded for a chance at the sky again, at something new. He was an artist the Shadow Broker used to say when it came to procuring information and removing a trail.

It was after all why the Benefactor hired him. In the end, it turned out that dealing in blood was the only way he knew to rule.

He soothes her, he calms her, and oh does Reyes loves her. He thinks she sees it sometimes in the look he gets when he is calculating a plan. In the way, his eyes go from liquid to steel. He has seen her do it too, he saw her in a cave in Draulir be the cold, cunning thing he always knew she was capable of.

* * *

She plays it for him one time, the message from her father, the one from Liara T'Soni, the cries and screams from the Milky Way. The monsters she sees in the dark these days. Peace is here, peace will hold, but she is afraid of the monsters they ran from.

His confessions come in her sleep when he lies awake finding peace in her serene face. When he finally feels no one is listening. SAM offline and her resting peacefully the weight of the Galaxy not entirely off her shoulders.

"I killed them," he says, "and oh so many others." Against the warm skin on her shoulder as she sleeps cradled in his arms. He is not the Benefactor. This was not his plan. He gave them the words, the secrets under the chance of a fresh start.

He ruined it the moment he fell in love with the sunset and the feel of the sky again.

She kisses him that morning without lingering, without hope for more as she heads to her ship, and back to the stars. She has orders and secrets of her own after all.

* * *

Messages between them are a frequent thing, sometimes dirty, sometimes endearments, sometimes pocket of raiders to be worried about or shipments of things they need to be aware of. She goes on a mission on the outer rim of Heleus and the signal stops. The messages stop with it, and the Tempest goes offline.

Keema jests that his productivity levels are up to when he isn't busy mating with the pathfinder, although his mood swings are something to be desired. He is a better man when she is around, he realizes. At first, he thought a pawn, but now so much more. He decides to tell her things when she returns.

Never if.

He rips apart every scent of information he can find about what happened. There is no sign of foul play, no leaking gases, nothing to soothe the constant ache in his heart of the pure not knowing.

* * *

Months later he gets an unnamed message from an untraceable number, and he is the master of finding these things. Just two words. Kralla's Song.

She is almost unrecognizable when he sees her, her full muscular frame near rail-thin, her eyes tired, and glassy as she waits near Umi. Her hair is no longer the thick brown he would tangle his hands in. "You look like you are waiting for someone?" He tries to make her smile, but her mouth doesn't move like it used to. It creeps up as she looks at him, drinks him in.

"Where were you?" He asked.

"Distress beacon." She turns back to the whiskey. "Had to go play savior." Sara drowns the whiskey. "Do you want to get out of here?"

He knows people are watching, he doesn't know what happened, but he knows eyes are all over them. She is giving him an ultimatum and he doesn't know why. It burns. They had terms that he agreed on.

"Why, Pathfinder. I never thought you'd ask." He plays up the charm, the desire, the role that he plays as if he is something he has wanted for years and now has a chance to have. She waits for him to lead the way. "My place is uh… rather far away."

"I can drive." She pushes past him.

* * *

They drive past Draulir, past raiders, past any eyes that she knows are watching. She parks the Mako at the turbines, makes it look like a routine exam, towards Diteon. Giving everyone an eyeful of him with her. She is dragging him out in the light. He feels an itch. He hates it. He does not feel safe anymore.

"Get out." She orders him as she leaves the Nomad behind him. "We can walk to your lair."

She usually only calls it that in jest. "Ryder…" he says softly. "Tell me-"

"Not yet." She shakes her head.

"Where is the Tempest?" He knows its not a port.

"Not. Yet." She grits out through her teeth.

* * *

They reach the small, hidden place he calls home. It's not a pre-fab with all its custom interior and additional defenses. He has several just like it scattered through here and Elaaden. Places to hide if he has to go to ground. He lets her take lead, although it kills him not to touch her. He watches her as she strips off her cloak and tosses it to the ground. Her gear looks so warn and ripped and patched up many times over. He leans against the door, struggling to keep his desire down to hold her, soothe her, remind her who she is.

She grabs what is left of the bottom of Mount Milgrom from his shelf. He was going to save that until he asked her to stay with him, to never leave him, to grow old and have a plot of land and no more death. She doesn't even ask if they can share as she takes a swig and hands it to him.

"Was it worth it?" She finally asks, quietly and so much smaller than he ever expected her to be.

He looks at her puzzled before it sinks in. Perhaps she wasn't as asleep as he thought, or perhaps SAM had always been listening. "I did what I had to do."

"You always get what you want." She sits down sinking into the sofa. "We found the Quarian Ark."

The words cut him deeper than she could ever know. Only a few knew what was there, hidden beneath the cold metal. He sits patiently across from her, not touching, very careful. He has to be a few steps ahead. They are playing a game. "Did you know?"

"Mi alma, I wish you had told me," Reyes answers quietly.

"I said no more secrets if they were important." She looks at him, shaking her head.

"Had you told me where you were going… you would have not gone... to the wolves." He says carefully. "What did you find there?"

"Death… but so much more than that…then things got ugly."

"Where is the Tempest?" He asked one more time.

She sits on his couch, hands trembling, barely looking at them. "Gone. There… there was…" She swallows, breathing hard. "Geth. There were Geth.. once we arrived we started waking up some of the colonists to help repair the ship.. get it ready to finish its journey… We were near the rim of Heleus… and hell broke loose. An uprising broke out, parts of the Quarian Ship were damaged.. we had to.. cannibalize the Tempest, use its pieces to get Ark.."

"And your team?"

"Dead." She breathed. "Not Vetra or Gil…"

"But Scott." He said.

"Yeah." She looked him in the eye for the first time. "He died protecting me… but what they did to Jaal…"

"Who?"

"Reyes... please listen...The Scientists… when we boarded... I should have known... SAM said something was weird about them.. It turns out those crackpots from Cerberus and ExoGeni took him in the night.. once everything.. once the fighting started. Once the people who hated the Geth revolted." Her eyes were bright blue and clear. " They took out so many of the pods. They were already down to half the cargo.. it was a blood bath. If it wasn't for SAM we wouldn't be here…"

She stood up and walked towards him. Her feet sure. "We killed them then. The…" she spat "others. Left them to float in space."

Reyes eyed the woman in front of him, nearly shaking with anger. "What was that display earlier, Sara?" He asked carefully.

She leans against his door and he can swear her entire body changes from the shaking wreck before him to something cold, something steel. Something very much like the Charlatan. "You promised me no major secrets, not when it came to me. You did not deliver on your promise. And we can't hide anymore."

"Sara- had I-"

"And I did not deliver on my end." She interrupted. "I don't care that you killed Jien Garson, especially when this golden promise was built on so many lies. Did you know? This entire thing is a pipe dream of a Geth? Cold hard calculation on the recovery and endurance of species that have tried for centuries to destroy them… cared enough to try to preserve organic life? And then chose NOT to come? They are in the ship Reyes. Please."

That he did not know, that was something new.

"The Ark left after the Reapers hit. So… so much screaming. That won't be here, Reyes. That WON'T." She turns to him, staring at him. "You are great at the strategy of all the things behind the scenes I'm not. I need you. I need you more than ever."

"And… what of us?" He asked hesitantly, suddenly afraid of the woman before him.

"I'm not what you think I am, not anymore." She smiles at him, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck as she drapes her arms around him. She is so tired of holding the world together and yet she decides to soldier on.

"And what are you?" Reyes asks.

"War." Sara pulls away and there is something in her eye. Something new. Something unfamiliar. It reminds him of the energy bursts around the machines.

Perhaps years ago, in a cave in memory he had made a wrong choice. "Heleus won't survive it." He insists, reminding her of words he whispered when he thought he might have been a better man.

"They will. Because I will make them." She sets her sights on the table, and he wonders, oh he wonders at his love of this woman, the soul he has sold for her. "They'll not just live. They'll thrive. We eliminated their ilk on the Quarian Ark. I will hunt down the agents of the Benefactor, those who have poisoned us against each other, lied to everyone for power, order the executions and they will be given a choice of pardon or execution. We will rebuild embassies and places of communication… because WHEN the Angarans find out what happened to Jaal…" She stands and looks out the window. "We have to be better. We have to be better than the Kett. We can't.. we can't... I'm sorry, Reyes, I couldn't stop them... I couldn't stop any of this.. I… I love you.." She falls to her knees and falls oddly silent. "And… I'm so sorry."

There are tears in her eyes. He touches them with his hand, but they aren't hot to his touch. Her skin is cold. Too cold for a human. He looks at the woman he loved and before he speaks his Omni-tool buzzes as news begins to pour in. He looks away from her for a moment, just a moment, bringing up his arm to read the news. It pours in, like rain, it pours in line blood in a gutter.

The Quarian Ark has docked at the Nexus. He sees the docket of new arrivals, and he sees the list of the dead. "What have you done, SAM?"

Mr. Vidal... It's Sara's body but not Sara's voice, I believe it was like you said… what we had to.

Notes:

I'm almost done with the last bit of Benefaction but I got stuck on this idea of what if they made the wrong choices in my story. What if things did not go well. Benefaction already revealed the geth in the ships, that the benefactor was up to something... and some other things... but what if it all went wrong? What if Reyes wasn't there for information? What if Heleus lost?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. Sorry about this. I promise smut in the future.


End file.
